KIEV, Ukraine—President Viktor Yanukovych brushed off Moscow's latest efforts to woo Ukraine into a Russia-led trade bloc, insisting in an interview that Kiev wants special terms that would allow it to develop relations with the European Union as well.

The sporadic confrontations that punctuated the past two years in the China seas subsided for a time. Senior U.S. military officials depicted the lull as a temporary, tactical retreat from the assertive stance Beijing assumed on such controversies as conflicting maritime territorial claims, foreign naval operations, and military surveillance in the "near seas".

Kazakhstan tries to balance its geopolitical interests between the east and the west when handing out oil and gas reserves. So it was high time that India, which landed a block in the Caspian Sea on Saturday, got a break in the central Asian country where US, Russian and Chinese oil firms have secured huge energy deals.

As the transit expert Raivo Vare considers, the visit of Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Estonia is a significant step within the relations development between the two states and it will positively influence the economy of our country.

The problem of non-proliferation still remains to be a complicated international problem. Current war in North African Libya once again has reminded of it. Politicians and experts began remembering, that Muammar Gaddafi intended aforetime for Libya to become a member of the nuclear club. But under powerful pressure of the leading UNO member-states he was forced to refuse of such plans, which in practice helped him to restore relations of Tripoli with world powers and other states of the world. Today, when Libya has found itself under the pressure of the UN sanctions, when NATO member-states lead warfare within its territory, it is even frightful to think what could happen if Gaddafi possessed nuclear weapon. They say, that in this case there could be no intervention of western states into Libya.

The American investor who once employed Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer who died unattended in a Moscow jail cell in 2009, said Monday that tax officials involved in the fraudulent $230 million refund scheme that Magnitsky was trying to expose have bought millions of dollars’ worth of real estate in Russia, Montenegro and Dubai, and stashed millions more in offshore bank accounts.

One of the world's biggest suspected fraudsters is living freely in luxury in London - and intends to call on Prince Andrew to help defend himself against Kazakhstan's accusations of a fraud that left British banks £5 billion poorer.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, the Caspian littoral states that are known to have common history of foundation and development in old time and as member states of the former USSR have always maintained amicable and good neighborly relations. The countries embarked on a brand new level of relations since both had gained independence back to 1991.

Take the biggest political-military alliance in history, protecting over 900 million people. And then take the world's second biggest country, whose population has just moved past the 1 billion mark. How could these two giants work together?